I spent my Christmas on a train travelling from Canada’s east coast to the west. When I wasn’t gazing out of the huge plate glass windows at mountains, frozen lakes and endless prairie land, I was reading Mansa Musa and the Empire of Mali by P. James Oliver. What an eye opener! Here’s your 60 second guide to the medieval ruler: Kankan Musa was...

It’s 2020 people! Time to get rid of all the books that have been clogging up your ‘must read’ pile and replace them with shiny new ones. Yes, that is exactly how reading should work. Here are 20 books by Black authors coming out this year. Go forth, read and spread the good news. (Click the book jackets to buy or pre-order) 1. Riot...

Korede’s gorgeous younger sister Ayoola has a nasty habit of killing her boyfriends once she grows tired of them. Covering up her sister’s crimes is bad enough, but life gets a lot more terrifying when Ayoola takes a liking to Korede’s love interest.

If you spend any time with me, the conversation will probably veer onto books. From there it’ll take me about 2.5 minutes before I start talking about my desire to see more books by Black authors. The slide from ‘more Black books’ into a lament on the lack of joyful Black books then becomes sure and unstoppable. Why? Because I love joy. I love...

The Robber Queen is Tan Tan’s favourite costume to wear at carnival on the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint. When her father is exiled to the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree, and Tan Tan is forced to go with him, she must reach into the heart of myth and become the Robber Queen herself in order to survive.

My nephew is 11 and obsessed with Derek Landy’s Skulduggery series. They’re a set of fantasy books about a skeleton detective and are as madcap as they sound. Every time I pop round he has his head stuck in a new book in the sequence. Either Landy has a factory churning these books out or he’s extremely prolific. I keep artfully suggesting to my...

Last year I visited Elmina Castle, a slave fortress on the coast of Ghana. It’s a beautiful white-washed building, very similar in style to Cape Coast Castle, the slave fortress where Yaa Gyasi sets key pieces of action in Homegoing. The castles are two of about 40 such structures that were built along the Ghanaian coastline by Europeans. They were trading posts that became...

Reviews

Korede’s gorgeous younger sister Ayoola has a nasty habit of killing her boyfriends once she grows tired of them. Covering up her sister’s crimes is bad enough, but life gets a lot more terrifying when Ayoola takes a liking to Korede’s love interest.

Last year I visited Elmina Castle, a slave fortress on the coast of Ghana. It’s a beautiful white-washed building, very similar in style to Cape Coast Castle, the slave fortress where Yaa Gyasi sets key pieces of action in Homegoing. The castles are two of about 40 such structures that were built along the Ghanaian coastline by Europeans. They were trading posts that became...

Baba Segi has three wives, seven children, and a home filled with riches. Now he has his sights set on Bolanle, a university graduate with a tragic past. When she joins his household, she unwittingly uncovers a secret which threatens to destroy the patriarchal foundation of his life. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin

Olivia and Aiden rescue a group of stranded refugees from a remote planet, only for their new passengers to start dying in suspicious circumstances. Gripping murder-mystery, space opera based on Othello.

When Nick Young invites his girlfriend on a trip to Singapore she frets about meeting his parents. She has no idea that her quiet, humble boyfriend has more money than the World Bank and that she’s about to enter the treacherous, back-biting world of Chinese high society.

At one point in 2017 it felt like Alyssa Cole’s name was coming at me from every direction. She’d pop up in every Twitter discussion that even vaguely mentioned a romance must-read list, whether the sub category was contemporary, historical or science fiction. During my 10 leagues deep obsession with the Hamilton musical I discovered Cole had contributed to a romance anthology called Hamilton’s...